Ron Paul Supporters Plan 'Paulvilles'

The supporters of Ron Paul love them some freedom, but ever since the rest of America made it perfectly clear that they weren't going to install Paul as the American equivalent of Saparmurat Niyazov, they've been a sad bunch of teddy bears, kvetching on their online fora and disrupting the odd caucus or two. But today, Ben Smith brings word of their long-term, post election plans and they basically involve schlepping off to the Texas desert to live together and, maybe later, secede from America or something:

The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty.

The process is forming a co-op of people buying shares in the community and these people would be granted land use at a minimum of 1 acre per share, for as long as they homesteaded the land. The community would be privately held by the co-op to establish private property for the general community thus preserving the community is 100% freedom and liberty lovers. The community votes on all community efforts, such as utilities etc. However no one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them, AKA people can be off grid on their share of land. This is in line with the ideals that you're free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with.

In short, a lonely, analog version of Second Life, only with no running water. The first Paulville is slated to be formed in Hudspeth County, Texas:

Hudspeth county has no building codes, this is important to people who want to experiment with alternative building technologies such as straw bale, rammed earth, papercrete an other non traditional building styles for these off grid homes.

Paulville.org warns that life in Paulville will not be "for the faint at heard [sic]" - what with all the rammed earth and "100% liberty" loving happening at all hours. No restrictions on the faint of brain, though!

Comments

[Pyrum]

Just as I expected, Ron Paul himself would not move to Paulville: http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0508/Paulville_Count_Ron_Paul_out.html

[RonLawl]

Libertarianism sounds like a great ideal, until someone actually tries to deliver on it. Then even the greatest supporters are all "let's run the hell away from this."

[huffnpuffn]

A handful of observations:

1. This may be true, and if so I'll go out on a limb here and predict some problems with the tax authorities in the not too distant future.

2. Jason Linkins is not a reporter. He's not even a decent blogger. This entire post consist of nothing more than cutesy remarks and quotes from the website in question. Who runs the website? Can we get an interview? Can he go to ICANN and get a name at least? Nope? Is that so hard? Nope. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=paulville.org

Somebody sucks and his name is Jason Linkins.

3. Texas has a long history of this sort of thing, and it rarely works out well. See Davidians, Branch.

[Quaoar]

I'm surprised the Paultards haven't descended upon this article en masse, with dozens of different usernames all originating from the same IP address. I guess that they (he?) went back to they're(his) parent's basement for the duration of the campaign.

[BadCompany]

All 15 of them are in Paulville creating a "freedom" city where only Paultards are allowed to live.

[Pyrum]

If there are so few Ron Paul supporters, then why is his book #1 on Amazon http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/30/ron-paul-book-hits-no-1-o_n_99517.html and soon to be #1 on the NYT list as well?: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/020882.html

And why is the republican party scrambling to prevent his delegates from going to the national convention?: http://www.politicallore.com/election-2008/the-greatest-ron-paul-conspiracy-theory/224

[RonLawl]

If there are so many people supporting Ron Paul, then why does he have the lowest approval rating of any GOP candidate, and the highest disapproval rating of any GOP candidate, and a lot voter turnout at any election where the opposition bothers to show up in general?

If Michelle Malkin sells a best selling book, does that mean that we should all start voting for her as well?

[NemoMIL]

Jason Linkins is an idiot and a hack.

[BadCompany]

Paulville was not Jason's idea.

[RonLawl]

Please. You're referring to a group of people that tries to rationalize that the Ron Paul newsletters were written by a political opponent of Ron Paul who successfully infiltrated Ron Paul's publication from the inside because they hate freedom so much. So why not blame Jason for Paulville?

[theunderstudy]

Jason, Jason. Tsk tsk.

The idea was probably concocted by a handful of zealous supporters who, for whatever reason, thought this would be a good way to demonstrate their support for Ron Paul. Yeah, they're being silly, but we can find people acting silly among the supporters of all the candidates.

This sort of thing is far from representative of the Ron Paul supporters as a whole, and should not be reported with any implication that it is. There is no real news value here---just bad journalism.

Of all the stories about Ron Paul and his supporters that you could have brought to the attention of the readers, you chose this one. Yeah, they made it easy for you, but you should be above that.

_

[RonLawl]

//Yeah, they're being silly, but we can find people acting silly among the supporters of all the candidates.//

Prove it. How many other candidates have their own version of Paulville going on? I mean, I can point out that all spiritual leaders have their own share of suicidal members, but that doesn't mean that all spiritual leaders are equivalent to Jim Jones in terms of nuttiness, since Jim Jones has the highest number of nuts per capita, and since Jim Jones took the nuttiness a lot further. The same goes for Ron Paul. He has the lowest amount of support out of any other candidate, the greatest number of nuts out of any other candidate, and the greatest degree of nuts out of any other candidate. Now, why do you think that is?

[theunderstudy]

Your logic is flawed. The precise manifestation of the idea doesn't have to be the same. It's the level of devotion and fanaticism that can be found in Obama supporters, some Clinton supporters, and if we looked hard enough, maybe a handful of McCain supporters too!

It is misleading to label him as the candidate with the least support now that there are only two Republican candidates in the race. When the primary season was getting underway, his support state-to-state was often outdoing that of Thompson, Giuliani, and Huckabee (and T. Thompson, Brownback, Gilmore, etc). And his fundraising numbers even outdid McCain!

As for your 'nutty' observations, yes, some of his supporters are nuts. But political spatial theory can explain a lot of that. They often misunderstand exactly what Paul is saying (and often think he's saying things that he isn't). Nevertheless, silly supporters are ultimately irrelevant in a serious debate about the candidates.

That's not to say you can't take issue with some of Paul's ideas or ideals; you certainly can. You can even call him nuts for it, though when you start throwing around words like 'batty' and 'Paultards' and 'nutty' or you single out small groups of supporters and try to make them representative of all supporters, you and your arguments begin to lose credibility as it seems like you're just out to score a cheap shot---like this article.

_

[RonLawl]

You claim that the same level of fanaticism can be found among Obama supporters, but you've yet to do anything to actually establish it. Simply asserting that two separate cases are analogous doesn't make it so.

And the only reason Ron Paul is still in the race isn't because he was performing so well, but rather, because he was the only one that didn't catch the hint. Which, again, is further evidence of him being nuts. Comparing Paul to 9/11 and Thompson is pointless, because that speaks more of their failures than Ron Paul's success, which is why they promptly decided to drop out. The same goes for the losers you listed who had less hype behind them than Dennis Kucinich. And Ron Paul rarely, rarely, rarely polled higher than Huckabee.

As for your theory of people misunderstanding what Ron Paul is saying, that's like insisting that Tom Cruise is giving scientology a bad name. Maybe he is, but that doesn't make Scientology a sound ideology. In fact, it could just mean that Scientology (like Paul) is completely non-sensical. Look at how they try to excuse his newsletter writings with the flimsy "ghostwriter" explanation. Their reasoning is completely idiotic, but only because it HAS TO BE. When Ron Paul becomes a more sensible man, he can expect to have more sensible supporters. Until then, I except to see the same group of white supremacist and 9/11 truthers who I've been accustomed to.

[gevan]

I hope they all will be bringing their guns. The ideal of the wild west rides again.

[BadCompany]

Can't forget the funny dresses, either.

[Stirner]

It is becoming rather tedious, and quite irritating, to be constantly ridiculed by neocon controlled shills.

[RonLawl]

Yes. Everyone on huffingtonpost.com who doesn't approve of a far-right winged republican who's too far right for most of his fellow republicans is obviously a neocon controlled shill. There is absolutely no other reason why a group of liberals would criticize a pro-life christian fundamentalist who thinks that evolution was a hoax, Lincoln was a tyrant, and FDR was the devil. YOU CALLED IT, DUDE.

It's sort of like how everyone on FOX News who doesn't like Hillary Clinton is obviously a card carrying pinko Stalinist, the type that Joseph McCarthy specifically tried to stop. Because I can't possibly fathom any other reason why someone at FOX News wouldn't pimp for Hillary. Not one.

[BadCompany]

So, you've bought into one of these "freedom" communes?

[BadCompany]

Oh, yeah!
That sounds like freedom to me.
Texas is a great place to try it out as well.

[CarlyCorday]

Way to go, Linkins! I love me some Paultard bashin. We don't need no stinkin Ron Paulies voting in the GE for the Democrat! Let em vote McCain instead, we don't need em OR want em!

YAY JASON! Jason Linkins for VP!

Got any more funny stories about that sad, kvetching bunch of teddy bears? Keep em comin through October, PLEEEEEASE!

Counting on you, Linkins. Don't let us down.